I shall not bring an automobile with me. These inventions infest France almost as much as Bloomer cycling costumes, but they make ...a horrid racket, and are particularly objectionable. So are the Bloomers. Nothing more abominable has ever been invented. Perhaps the automobile tricycles may succeed better, but I abjure all these works of the devil.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fabulous Wizard of Oz Retired from his racket because,... What with up-to-date science, To most of his clients He wasn't the Wizard he was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sprung rhythm sprang, and I found (the mind fact-mining at last) An influence Father-Hopkins-fathered on the copy-writing rac...ket.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[My one tennis book] was very, very old. It had a picture of Bill Tilden. I looked at the picture and that was how I learned to ho...ld the racket.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people's consciousness, the people's conscience, freedom and ...so forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen--this is the same as lying to the holy spirit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive ...contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People having speech defects sometimes learn part of the practice by laborious study, but good speech is always mainly unconscious... speech. Any tennis player, even if he could not explain this enigma, could provide an analogy for it. When he sees a rapidly flying tennis ball coming toward him, he knows what he must do. He must maneuver himself into the proper position, be poised with his weight properly distributed, meet the ball with the proper sweep of his arm and with his racket held at just the right pitch, and all this must be timed to stop the flying ball at a precise point. But if the tennis player pauses to think of all these actions and how he will perform them, he is lost. The ball will not skim back over the net, building air pressure as it goes until it buzzes down into the opponent's corner. If the tennis player thinks about anything except where he wants the ball to go and what he plans for the next stroke, he will probably become so awkward that he will be lucky to hit the ball at all. Rapid, precise muscular actions can be successfully carried out only by the unconscious part of the brain. And so with the speaker. He cannot speak well unless he speaks unconsciously, for his movements are as precise, as complicated, and as exactly timed as those of the tennis player.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The people I'm furious with are the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming women are brighter t...han men. That's true, but it should be kept quiet or it ruins the whole racket.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidair...es, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »